Jonah Blank

On Sunday, Ashraf Ghani was declared the victor in a contest to determine Afghanistan’s next president. The process has been infuriating. But the end result was the best possible outcome: best for Afghanistan, best for the region, and best for the United States.

Preliminary tallies suggest that Jokowi won Indonesia's July 9 presidential election, but his competitor, Prabowo, is not guaranteed to go quietly. The stakes could hardly be higher: Since the fall of Suharto in 1998, Indonesia has been a showpiece of democracy in Asia. The final count will either solidify this narrative, or toss it right out the window.

If Afghanistan’s politics were a stock market, one could make easy money with an investment strategy consisting of only one word: “sell.” Bad news is the norm, and good news is often a lie. And that is why the nation’s election to decide who should replace Hamid Karzai as president was so confusing.

Modi's record and rhetoric have raised fears about how his government will treat India's minorities and the country's neighbors. But the very size of his victory may be reason for optimism. With no need to fire up his electoral base, Modi has considerable room to take a less confrontational approach -- both domestically and abroad.

Every invasion of Afghanistan has eventually come to naught, either because the invaders paid insufficient attention to local culture or because they sought to impose centralized control. If the United States is interested in leaving behind a better Afghanistan than the one it found, it needs to take those experiences to heart.

Last year's nuclear tests by both India and Pakistan brought world attention to the decades-old Kashmir conflict. Claimed by both countries, the former princely state has been ravaged by a war that shows no sign of ending. Both rivals have invested heavily in blood and treasure to make Kashmir their own. Now Afghan-trained mujahideen are leading the fight, bringing their own foreign brand of radical Islam. Neither New Delhi nor Islamabad has ever asked what Kashmiris want. They would not like the answer: more than anything else, Kashmiris hope to be left alone.